9/8/11: Overtime, Super Bowl Champions, and Crappy Web Sites: If I needed a reason to drink or hire an attorney

I'd like to save the final third of a handle of Stoli in my freezer, but today was one of those days. Actually, it's been couple of weeks, but I digress. If I wasn't a stubborn prick, I'd probably be drinking till I cleaned out my sinuses.

Never have I missed an hour of work because of my drinking. For my coworker who brings up, what about that Sunday a year ago, I swear that was a sinus attack, or it was something I ate (giggidy). It was more likely God being that funny asshole to make sure I couldn't keep that glow after my first one night stand. No good lay goes unpunished. If that isn't the gospel truth, what is?

And I guess it goes for good deeds to. I feel I was bullied into a 1:00 pm to 1:30 am shift tomorrow because someone does not have the friends or family to drive them to work. Actually, that should be an ego boost. I at least have enough family so this would not happen. Still, if I don't do this, the job will only get worse. It's just corporate bullshit.

My job is getting phased out (my employment is not at risk), so no one will be hired to handle the insane work load. But no exceptions will be made to terminating employees. Because of this, someone who doesn't have eight hours of earned time, despite they do have five, the company (HGS) feels it's grounds for being shit canned.

Because someone on a third shift cannot come in for an entire shift on a weekend morning (saving the company at least $30 in wages), the powers that be think it would be better to hurt their employees who they abuse enough by firing someone who cannot come in for one night.

And they would do it. They released someone who they hired, and knew suffered from MS because he could not overcome it in a timely manner. Some say there are too many lawyers, but if you have one, no one will fuck with you. That is the only possible way some brainless bitch (I just don't want to accuse her of being a sociopath) who cannot even be 30 years old can claim carpal tunnel and back issues, and collect workers comp for over a year.

Law, a profession that must be regulated by the government. If you put a reasonable cap on what they can make, everyone will have the same chance to become the next Casey Anthony, and there is noway that we would have to deal with the next generations of Kardashians.

Curious, when it is not too soon to make Casey Anthony jokes? Guys can make dead baby jokes, but dead toddlers is off limits?

So, that should take off the martyr feel off this blog. It's tough to think I'm covering those hours because I don't want to deal with the guilt of leading someone to employment status change. If anything, I'm pissed that I didn't suggest the coworker just use their religious persuasion to get out of work.

"I don't roll on Shabbos!"

Enough of getting three hours dropped on me in the name of capitalism a concept which is damning the Venezuelan socialist reconstruction of the Colombian drug trade. Fucking bitter Republicans about their failed coup off a successful socialist country that does not have an overwhelming military.  I got the Saints game on the DVR.

Again, if I needed a reason to drink. This is probably karma for buying that Packer lucha mask for cheap heat despite my conditional retirement from pro wrestling (I figure I'll be working the next AAW show, because someone has to wrestle El Tigre Gordo). I'm almost glad that it cut out with five minutes left in the final quarter (that may change by the end of this blog as I have "Sportscenter " on for the noise).

On top of that, the new web design has been rigged to not allow me to use the web pages I had coded over the past two years. Nothing on the Internet makes sense to me. Blogger and GoDaddy want me to pay the another five bucks a month. IF YOU WANT AN EXTRA FIVE LINCOLNS A MONTH, TELL SECURE FIRST TO PAY ME THE $660.00 THEY OWE ME. THAT WOULD COVER GODADDY'S FEES FOR 11 YEARS. Hell, I'll pay GD an extra $5.00 a month to get that victory.

Again, we all need attorneys. If only those Janssen guys could learn to live on $900,000 a year.

9/28/11: Would King Diamond take time off for Grandma?

From HGS's transition of the Ryder Customer Response Center (Peoria and Manila) to a new third party call center company (Tennessee and Jamaica).

It turns out that Jamaicans do not understand English as well as Filipinos do. I don't like picking on those who do not speak a generic American dialect, but when you are getting paid to speak it, comprehend it.

Now if I want to walk that stereotype line, the language barrier isn't the issue, it's the relaxed culture. You would hope the Yanks who are reinventing the training program for my lame-duck position would be partaking, but they know that would prevent them from bitching at us because we cannot repair their fuck ups.

They got to go out of their way to treat us better. It is damn near intolerable. We are so understaffed, if I was management, I would have demanded better proof to get out of work to see my dying grandma than a text message. Even the dumbest cell phones have camera phones. If a boss demanded visual evidence, and you provided it to them, they should probably feel so shitty that they will give you a couple of extra bereavement days off.

Honestly, I'm just pissy because I think the employee in question will use this as an excuse not to comeback to the job. Of course, I never missed work unless it was wrestling related or I was locked up in the county jail. Only being in a personal hell kept me from making money.

Perhaps you can blame my parents who insisted I go to my class at ICC the day my dad had his heart attack. You had a few hours since driving him to the hospital, get back to the books. Fucking night classes to earn a web design certificate. Three years to earn a semester's worth of credits, and I wonder why my degree landed me a wretched employer like Secure First.

You are second shift. If you want to say your farewells, wake up to get their before your shift. Do you really need to see someone die? Maybe I'm blessed because the only death I dealt with was a grand pyrotechnics display, and over in minutes. Sorry mom and dad, my luck, you'll probably croak when I decide to get a Coke.

So the chronically depressed guy who wants to get my affairs together discovers that when I decide to cash in my chips and flip God off, I got to make it look spectacular. Further knowledge of God's cruel sense of humor. He gets his jollies by savoring the frustrations of a perfectionist who swears that if its going to be done, it has got to be done right.

Placing him in an uncaring work environment that leaves little time to do anything else but think of how pointless his existence makes me think that God is taking his satirical inspiration from "Saturday Night Live." The premise is no longer funny, get to the punchline.

So when I end it all, I better get some laughs out of it as well. I am destined to be Wile E. Coyote.

Rape Culture Killed My Blog: Track 2 of Wish You Were Here

I think the world may have been going to shit before Trump became president. His election is hopefully just the bottom.

The thing that has been bugging me since after the planet's finest moment (any particular suggestions on this year's Spring Training tattoo...I'm stuck between touching up the most famous Cubs ink in pro-wrestling with the addition of some true football stars for 1907 and 1908 and the number 3 for 2016 or accompanying Ziggy Star Cub with a Queen Cub [if the latter, with or without the 80s' Mercury Stache]) is a topic that men may not have a place to make a statement about. My job at the I Hotel has left me dealing with seemingly the worst elements of white privilege, but to find those elements present in my social and family life makes it tough to be silent, regardless if it is misguided as I continue letting the keyboard express it.

When you tell an employer you prefer evenings, but are scarcely allowed to work them, you learn to that you better appreciate any moment you have before the third act of "The Daily Show (I'm cutting the cable off as soon as I move from my heat-deprived, roach-infested "not section 8" apartment, so I'll be more woke when I don't need to skip ACLU and women's rights activists to shower in my wet and dark, gnat-consumed bathroom). My girlfriend and I wanted to get the most out of November 4, a Friday, and when we heard about Emily Blue's benefit show for victims on WCIA that night, we decided to check it out. I am happy to say that our cover fees should have covered the cost for the local rape crisis hotline to operate for at least one more day, but when my girlfriend found out that the abuse to women was beyond just strikes and throws, she insisted that we had to leave. I tried to talk her into returning for the show, but she told me to that her near misses with rape (isn't that technically a hit, a joke from my dad that seems appropriate as I type it) made her scared to even address topic.

I had talked to her months ago about my need to write that in a blog, and I appreciate her understanding when she gave me permission to follow through. And I am grateful that she let me push back that night against her request for me to come to church for a sense of community that my hours do not allow me and for my personal salvation. It is also great that she did not think I was too much of a dick when I left her once we got back home to claim the other half of the make-up wings that Wing Stop deprived me of.

My girl and I enjoyed what time we had when we settled in at home, but if I knew I had to leave her to go and:

• Play nice with an out-of-touch state comptroller (to her credit, Lisa Munger was very polite and accommodating guest).
• Deal with the bullshit of the alleged towel-stealing, bar tab-skipping owner of the Secure First insurance brokerage who allegedly screwed me out of $660 seven years ago (when I find my certified mail receipt from when I sent an invoice and a disc of the webwork I did for his company, you can scratch the last alleged).
• Monitor hallways to give out noise complaints to drunk NIBCO valve employees (probably sales persons) who were there for Kid Rock's corporate gig that took place at The Accord.

I would have probably called in that night, and they should not have taken issue with this since I did not tell them to fuck off (more likely risk wasting their time with a polite plead...my bite comes from typing or three vodka drinks) when I had to pick up a St. Louis Cardinals fan at the airport instead of watch the last three out of game seven two days prior. When I found out that NIBCO's gig moved Emily Blue's benefit to the smaller Clark Street Bar (good for the sparse crowds of industrial/goth Wednesday nights, not much for a record release from Champaign's hottest act [I'm still new to the C-U, so pardon incidental hyperbole]), "Welcome to the Machine" seemed to be the appropriate soundtrack for that overnight.

It is bad enough to work for a wannabe Biker for Trump, but finding out you employer assisted in facilitating a greed driven performance from one of the most outspoken supporters on the New Face of Rape Lite (Bill Cosby would be the full-calorie face of the crime), you have pretty much determined then that you better get out-of-there once you get...a new apartment and at least the week paid vacation for serving there a year. My girlfriend should be proud of me at least working for some kind of salvation for my past three months of working in sin. Or maybe this blog will let her know to lay off thinking about the negotiating possibilities when they know I am looking for the unsecured exit door to the FDC rim-jobbing the rich tax write off.

If there is a silver lining to this, it is knowing that Donald Trump's finances being so poor is the reason that he is not releasing his tax returns. Surely Kid Rock can perform a cleaned up set on the Washington Mall for a rather low price if a piping company can get him to play a bar that hold 500 in Illiana. Hell, Trump supporters would not curse him for his vulgar objectification of women, so no need to put the effort in cleaning up his act.

My opinion of my work environment only got worse when I had to deal with the attendees of the Illinois Farm Service Conference (emphasis on Farm so you can picture the appearance, accent and attitudes of these drunks) while they were waiting for the official announcement of a Trump victory. A mess of beer bottles, Pop Tarts and an information monitor for the Illinois Conference Center that the guests screwed around with to find Fox News coverage awaited me when my coworker sent me on a floor walk to avoid me for finally snapping on their demands to take the "Clinton News Network" off the lobby television. I guess I should appreciate the fact my fellow coworkers want to keep me around.

The rednecks who celebrated the abandonment of the majority of the nation did not say anything that was particularly offensive beyond the character assassination of the woman who should be leading this country and mocking the whines of the caring and rational. It was just difficult to handle four hours of it (for fucksake, last call was 1 am at the bar). I state this because trashing and victim blaming women for the tragedies men force upon them was not prevalent. This bullshit was something I did not need before I had to return to the ignorant (I mean conservative) towns that I had been longing to get away from.